


Your Own Heart, Reflected

by perfectpro



Category: Borgias - Ambiguous Fandom, The Borgias (Showtime TV)
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 06:21:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19941631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectpro/pseuds/perfectpro
Summary: They were meant to be siblings, to grow up together, if only because Cesare does not believe they could ever be parted from each other. Brother, sister – they should have been twins, together even from the womb. They were meant to be siblings, and yet they were meant to be so much more.--Cesare and Lucrezia, as they have always been.





	Your Own Heart, Reflected

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the Borgias and immediately began rewatching it when I finished, which helped to spawn this.

Lucrezia grows up adored, blonde hair framing her angelic face, fair enough that she can’t hide even the slightest blush. She is a Borgia child, a Borgia daughter, and there has never been a question as to what that means.

Her father calls her the light of his life, and her mother showers her with affection, and she spends her childhood reading romances, walking through gardens, listening to people tell her that she’s beautiful, that one day she might grow up and marry a prince, that she’ll be happy. She doesn’t know cruelty or unkindness, only that her father will give in to her every whim should she only ask.

The Borgia family is close, more than close, twined together. Cesare and Juan are protective of her to a fault, running when they hear her cries, pulling her to them even if she’s only pricked herself on a rose. 

“Dear sister,” Juan teases her, always teasing, never serious for a moment even when he needs to be, kissing the tip of her finger after wiping the blood away, “even the most beautiful things can be dangerous.”

She stares at her finger, watching another drop of blood gather, the same color as the rose petals, blinking away the tears that prick at her eyes. “It caught me unaware, that is all,” she says, feeling how her finger pulses as the blood rushes. Tearing her eyes away from it, she locks eyes with Cesare, standing behind Juan, who takes her hand in his own and presses a handkerchief to the wound.

“You should take more care,” Cesare tells her, and he leads them out of the gardens and back to the house. Juan races in front more than once, impatient as ever and annoyed at having to wait for them, but Cesare walks steadily beside her, still holding her hand.

-x-

Cesare takes up the cloth, Juan takes up the sword, and Lucrezia yearns to adventure but doesn’t know where she longs to adventure to. They are the Borgia children, and everyone knows them, eyes watching them in the marketplace, at the pulpit, in the fencing yard. Their father’s ambitions grow with his position – but that is incorrect.

Their father’s ambitions have remained constant, but his position grows to match it. Cesare and Juan rise within the ranks of their professions as well, and Lucrezia looks out her window and dreams.

The sword matches Juan perfectly. He is a fighter to a fault, but it is hard to imagine him as soldier, following orders instead of giving them. His exuberance is the best thing about him, and he never fails to greet Lucrezia by lifting her in the air and swinging her about. When he raises her high, she feels lighter than air, helpless to do anything but give in to his mood and race him through the halls. Their father laughs when he catches them, their mother offers a smile, and Cesare merely watches them.

They try to convince him to race with them, Juan going so far as to taunt him with defeat as Lucrezia pleads with him, her eldest brother, her greatest protector. He never gives in, firm in his resolve, but when they take off again, Lucrezia sees him hiding a smile in his collar. 

Cesare has always been solemn, all too aware of his responsibilities as the eldest Borgia child. Though he resists, it isn’t hard to see how well he fits in the clergy. He lets his siblings indulge in their games, though, almost reluctantly amused. Lucrezia always tries her best to make him happy, but she suspects part of why he gives into her demands is because he knows it delights her so. 

“I would do anything you asked of me,” he tells her when she asks what would make him happy.

Lucrezia only laughs, tipping her head back, her hair catching the light of the sun easily. It is spun gold, pure luxury, and she is oblivious to her beauty, the most innocent of all creatures. “Cesare, I asked what would make you happy, not what you would do for me,” she presses, constantly amused.

Holding her gaze, he merely repeats himself, unwavering in his response. “I would do anything you asked of me.”

-x-

The years have been kinder to them than most. Rodrigo becomes Alexander XI, and the Borgias become the Holy Family, situated at the center of Rome. As their mother says, the attention suits them.

Lucrezia is the Pope’s daughter, the envy of maidens, and it isn’t long before her father speaks of her marriage, the alliances she could form. It is only natural, she is the only daughter of a powerful family, she must do what she can.

Her stomach turns when she thinks of it, despite the fact that she’s known of it since she was a child. Daughters of powerful families can still be married to men who would mistreat them, men who would only value them for the heirs they can produce. 

“Do I have to marry, Cesare?” Lucrezia asks. It seems there is no other option for her.

“No,” he answers carefully. He parses out the option with thought. “You can take the cloth like me. You can become a nun. We’ll live in sanctity and prayer, like Abelard and Eloise.” He smiles when he says it, knowing that it will never come to pass but willing to enjoy the thought of it.

She is not meant for a nunnery, but the thought of living like a princess locked in a tower with only letters to sustain her is the stuff of the romances she grew up on. “Did they love each other?” It is the only question that matters to her.

Seriously, he meets her gaze and assures her, “With a love as pure and all-consuming as the love of God.”

If it were her decision, that would make it for her. She smiles, but it is weak in comparison to the usual gaiety she has no trouble conveying. “So, then. I shall become a nun.” That description of love leaves no question in her as to where her fate should lie. “For I shall never love a husband as I love you, Cesare.”

The intensity of his emotions is palpable but ineffable. There are layers within him he has never truly shown her nor expressed in anything but a veiled form. “I am afraid, dear sis, that the Pope does not ask you to love your future husband, merely to marry him.” His words are sardonic and nearly incomprehensible.

“So, love and marriage. Are they incompatible?” It should not be difficult to separate the concepts, and yet Lucrezia struggles all the same.

His sister’s naivety only confirms his beliefs that she’s far too young for a marriage, and he wishes that he were not the one to inform her. “No,” he says, honestly as far as he knows, “but I have been told that one does not imply the other.”

Her lips purse together, pouting for a moment, before they part to ask, “Is that not sad, Cesare?”

He doesn’t find it anything more than merely regretful, but he has accepted that he may never marry. For her, with the duty approaching ever closer, it is a wretched thing to realize and to watch her understand. “Most things in life prove to be sad, sis. Again, I have been told.”

The idea of leaving her family, leaving Rome, is sorrowful enough to her. Knowing that she risks embarking on a new life that would leave her grief-stricken over the loss with no respite… It is nearly too much for her to bear.

“And if my husband proves ungallant?” Lucrezia asks, unable to contain her worries.

Cesare pauses before he answers, but it is not because he is unsure of what to say. Taking her hand in his, he swears to her, “I shall cut his heart out with a dinner knife and serve it to you.”

He pushes her against the wall, forceful and commanding because he cannot restrain himself, and her heart swells with love. She cannot imagine any man who would not take Cesare at his word, who would not believe the fire in his eyes. Her safety is guaranteed through her family, if not through their status then through the air of finality that Cesare exudes.

-x-

When she walked the gardens of her girlhood, she would stroll along the pathways with her father and listen to him speak of the possibility of her marriage. How princes would travel from far-off lands to beg for her hand.

She is not to marry a prince, as it turns out. Giovanni Sforza, the Lord of Pesaro, is chosen for her, and Lucrezia does as all dutiful daughters do and exhibits simple obedience. In the weeks after the arrangement has been made and before Lord Sforza arrives in Rome, she still runs through corridors with Juan, both chasing him and being chased. This time, even after they tell him to join, Cesare does not smile.

He is a cardinal, now, resplendent in red robes and adorned in finery. 

“You think you are too good for us now, brother,” Lucrezia tells him, leaning into his side as she catches her breath. “Our Holy Father would join us, though, I know it. If it is not your office that prevents you, then what?”

Juan chuckles behind her, watching them from where he is propped against the wall. He is barely out of breath, his soldier’s physique unbothered by the short sprint. “I don’t believe it is his office that forbids him, sis, but rather his fear of failure.” His grin is infectious, Lucrezia has always thought it so, and she lets out an unbidden laugh of surprise.

Cesare has always found it easier to resist Juan’s charm. “It would be unbecoming of a cardinal to be found racing the hallways,” he answers, wrapping an arm around Lucrezia to hold her close. “It would also be unbecoming for our brother here to find himself behind me at the finish.” There is some mirth in his eyes, but it does not show in his face.

“But you must. We haven’t raced since we were children, and soon I will be gone. Give me a last race,” Lucrezia pleads with him, tugging at the arm of his robe. She looks up to find his expression has shuttered closed, and his arm tightens briefly around her before he removes it.

She wants to ask him again, she knows he’ll give in, but Juan rests his hand upon her shoulder and almost gently pulls her away. She goes with him, and they walk down the hall together slowly, not racing, and Lucrezia cannot help but turn to look back at where Cesare stands, unmoved, staring blankly out to the courtyard.

-x-

Her marriage approaches, and all the while Lucrezia tries to appreciate her last weeks of living in the Vatican and in their mother’s home. She walks in the gardens, focused on the flowers, wondering what new kind of fauna grows in Pesaro. She wonders if her husband has a garden that grows anything more than vegetables and herbs, if she will be able to grow cyclamen on the grounds.

She would have thought Cesare to be busier than usual, new to his position and presumably having more responsibilities to go with it, but if anything he is available at all hours. He walks with her through the gardens, brings sweets to her rooms, sets what workload he does have aside the moment she shows any indication of boredom.

“I shall miss this,” she whispers once, seated on a bench in the garden. She loves Rome, the beauty and splendor of the Vatican, the seemingly unlimited supply of sunshine, the way her days here seemed to march unendingly before her until she found herself nearing the final ones.

Stiffening beside her, Cesare picks an early bloom from a nearby bush and turns to thread it through her hair. “You needn’t miss it yet. This will not be the last time you are home.” His movements are stiff, the words sound rough as they pass through his lips, and Lucrezia knows he understands her still.

She will return, she knows, but it will not be the same. She will soon be a wife, the lady of a household, charged with ensuring the cogs turn smoothly so that her husband will never need concern himself with her sphere of domesticity. When she returns to Rome, she may even have a child. The thought of it is strange despite the fact that it’s something she has always known would be in her future. She perhaps did not realize the future was quite so near.

His hand stills in her hair, the flower settled, and Lucrezia waits until he is facing her completely before she reminds him, “It may be the last time it will be my home.” 

As of recently, her mood is more of a match for Cesare’s restraint and solemnity than Juan’s carefree abandon. They are both her brothers, and she loves them each, but Cesare is the one she longs for when she is alone. He knows the core of her, it is reflected inside of himself. She knows it when she stares into his eyes, that her understands her wholly. 

Even still, there are traces of him that are a mystery to her. When she looks into his eyes, there is a shadow in them. Lucrezia forces herself to forget it and instead clings to his chest when he takes her in his arms. There is a sudden need within her to be close to him, to express how badly she longs to stay in Rome, to stay with their family, to stay with him, but she cannot find the words.

-x-

The night before her wedding, it storms. Lucrezia thinks of Rome and its sunshine, but the only reason she has her beloved garden is because of the rain.

Storms have frightened her since she was a little girl. Cesare always tells the story of when she was a babe, the first storm after her birth, she wailed in the nursery loud enough to wake him. He came to her in the night and comforted her, and their parents awoke to find their eldest son sleeping on the floor of the nursery next to his sister’s cradle.

The tale amazes everyone, especially when their mother reminds them Cesare’s room was on another hall, though, and the nursery was next to Rodrigo’s and Vannozza’s rooms. It is odd, to be sure, but Lucrezia has never thought of it as such. To her, it makes perfect sense. Cesare has always protected her, even when she was too young to know her cries were for him.

The crashes of thunder keep her awake, and despite the fact that Lucrezia is a woman on the eve of her wedding night, a woman who should have no need of such childish things, she gets out of bed and puts on a robe over her chemise. 

The walk to Cesare’s room is short; their rooms are close enough together that she could shout for him and he would hear her. It is shortened still by the fact that Cesare is walking down the hallway in front of her, looking as though he has been caught doing something forbidden.

“Brother,” Lucrezia greets him in surprise, stopping suddenly.

“Sis,” he responds in kind, halting where he stands. “Why are you awake at this hour? Surely you should be sleeping.” A moment passes, and he grits out the words, “Tomorrow is your wedding day.”

She freezes, ashamed of herself for her girlish needs, and tightens her robe as she shivers. She had not put on slippers with the anticipation that she would be long for another bed, and the stone is cold beneath her feet. Regret pulls on her, urging her to rush back to her room, but she has never been able to lie to Cesare. “I was frightened; the storm kept me awake.” 

All at once, she feels like a small child, ready to be admonished and then sent back to bed, like when Father would catch her wandering the halls at night. She turns her gaze to the floor and waits to hear him laugh, amused at his little sister, still afraid of thunder.

He does not.

Daring to look up at him, she watches what she can of his face, most of it hidden in the shadow. “And what of you, Cesare? Am I not the only soul still awake on this night?” The words are a whisper, and Lucrezia feels bold in the dark hallway.

Cesare shifts his weight, and it is a long moment before he replies, “I remembered you did not have a fondness for this weather, and I came to see if I could comfort you.”

She flings herself at him, burying her face in his neck. There has never been a question between them that has gone answered, nor a need that went unmet. “Please,” she gasps, helpless at the knowledge that she is leaving, that this is all the time they have left together.

“Come now, you are freezing,” Cesare whispers, the force of her shivers wracking against him.

“I did not wear slippers,” Lucrezia admits, stifling a laugh at her foolishness. “I did not plan to remain in the hall for long.” She covers her mouth to hold back a shout when he lifts her without warning, shifting her in his arms so that her feet do not touch the floor.

His smile has been long missed, and Lucrezia admires the beauty of it as it spans over his features, unburdened even as he carries her to her bedroom. He shoulders the door closed behind them, taking care to not jostle her with the movement. “What did you plan to do, then?” Cesare asks, but they are one and the same, and he already knows of her plans.

Teasingly, she smiles at him and holds fast to his neck as he lowers her into her bed. “I would have walked down the hall to your rooms, and I would have opened the door gently, so as not to wake you.”

“You would not have me comfort you?” he asks, turning his face to her, his breath hot upon her face.

She smiles coyly. “In time. First, though, I would crawl into your bed, slipping underneath your covers, and I would place my bare feet upon your calves, under your nightclothes.”

Cesare laughs at her boldness, climbing upon the bed and pulling her close to him. “You are wicked, dear sister,” he tells her, but his voice betrays him, and Lucrezia blooms under his warmth, restored to her at last after so long.

“I am not wicked, dear brother,” Lucrezia resolves, gathering the bedding she had previously pushed down. She spans it over their forms, shifting until she is lying completely at his side. “I am a Borgia.”

-x-

Cesare marries her. He marries her to Giovanni Sforza, a man who says few words but rests his gaze upon Lucrezia as though appraising cattle for market.

When he awoke in Lucrezia’s bed, he watched his dear sister at the window, looking up at the parted clouds. “Did you rest well, my love?” he asks, though he already knows the answer. He stayed awake listening to her breathing even out, and he would have woken if she had cried out in the night.

Her smile is more hesitant than the night before, and her hands grip at the window sill with white knuckles. “I did, thank you, dear brother.” She turns away, watching the blue sky. “It is a beautiful day for a wedding, is it not?”

She is still wearing her robe, but it has shifted, exposing one bare shoulder and the edge of her chemise sleeve. He wonders if her husband will appreciate her like this, her stillness in the morning light, her hair emanating the glow of a halo. With his best efforts, he manages, “You deserve nothing less.”

After the wedding, Giovanni’s gaze turns from his wife, watching the ridiculous and bawdy show Juan has created for them. He snakes his eyes on the woman with her breasts displayed on the stage, and there is a stone in Cesare’s stomach.

This man will never appreciate his sister. Cesare wonders if he will even try.

Lucrezia falls asleep, nearly knocking her cup of wine over, but Cesare saves it in time, pushing it out of danger. She is but a girl, a girl afraid of storms and fonder of gardens than she is of bookkeeping. He has faith in her abilities to run a household; she has always been a fast learner, but his stomach turns at the thought of what other wifely duties she must fulfill.

As he takes her to her bedroom, he carries her as he did the night before, the way a bridegroom would lift his betrothed over the threshold. She is pliant in his arms, lulled to sleep by the wine and the activities of the night, and he longs for her to wake up and assure him it has all been a dream.

She sleeps on, whimpering as he puts her to bed and removes her arm from around his neck. For a moment, she tenses, and he is sure that she has woken, but the moment passes. 

On his way out of her rooms, he spares a look back at his sister, splayed upon the bed, head propped up by a pillow with her pale blonde hair only slightly disturbed after the night’s events. She is a beauty, the picture of innocence itself, and he will miss her with his whole heart when she has gone.

-x-

Her husband’s hands are hard, rough and calloused by work. He presses them into her body, molding it to his liking, and Lucrezia cries out helplessly.

She has never been somewhere where no one would answer her cries. Even when Cesare was studying in Pisa, Juan would rush to her, pulling her close until her fit passed. Her brothers have always protected her, but they are nowhere to be found in Pesaro. 

She is Lady Sforza, at the mercy of her husband’s brutal hands.

Every thrust within her is a punishment, pain like a knife between her legs, pain like nothing she has ever experienced before. This is his right as her husband, she tells herself, willing it to go away. He is angered because she fell asleep on their wedding night, he is punishing her for that. She reasons with herself, even while the truth makes itself known to her.

He is punishing her for being a Borgia, and he is relentless.

-x-

There is a groom in the stables who looks at her, who watches her when he thinks she does not notice. She notices, because she is looking back.

This land is unfamiliar to her, she has only a single handmaiden that she can trust, and she longs to be back in Rome among her family. There is little solace to be had, her husband’s hands upon her leave bruises that molt her fair skin, and so she takes what is available to her. Her Narcissus is beautiful, hands soft even though they have known nothing but work, and he touches her with the gentleness she craves.

Her innocence is gone, and she spends her nights in the bed of a man who married the Borgia he believes is beneath him. It is not hard to ask for what she wants, to accept that of which Paulo so freely offers her.

Hunting accidents happen to even the most experienced of riders. No one thinks any further on the matter.

The Sforza estate is not home, but she finds happiness in the time she steals with her Narcissus, learning the pleasure that should have been given to her freely. 

Her letters home, addressed to My Holy Father, read of her care for her husband, who she hopes will recover soon. She mentions riding his horse to ensure its vivacity, but she does not write of the groom she takes with her on the rides. Every letter is signed, With all my love, I remain Lucrezia Borgia.

This marriage may have changed her in ways she could never have imagined, but she is still a Borgia. She will always be a Borgia.

-x-

She rides home for Gioffre’s wedding, and the closer she gets to Rome the more like herself she feels again. The Vatican is more beautiful than she remembered, and she crawls into her father’s bed to wake him in the way she would do as a child.

Preparations for the celebration are underway, maids bustling everywhere with things to take care of before the ceremony, and Lucrezia looses herself in the business of Rome once more. This city where she belongs, not locked away in a land where she knows no one other than the man who forces himself upon her night after night.

It will not do to think of such things. She has returned for a celebration, the wedding of her youngest brother, and she will not stay for long. Her time spent in Rome should be happy, and so she sneaks down the corridors and wanders the grounds until she finds him.

There would have been an easier way to accomplish the same thing, perhaps, but he has never been hard for her to find.

“Cesare,” she calls, and he comes to her without hesitation, lifting her into his arms. Already, it feels easier to breathe. She has missed him so, his rough voice, his gentle hands, even the crimson of his robes.

Happiness becomes her, doubly so with family, even more with Cesare, and she would not dwell on the state of her marriage when she is with him. It is fruitless to say that she expected a prince to shower her with affection, to freely converse with her husband after just only meeting him.

She does not give him details, refuses to disclose anything beyond Giovanni’s accident, asks after him before he can press her further. “And what of your heart?” she asks, resting her hand upon his chest.

“It was broken,” he confesses, and she is on the way to confessing her own heartbreak at her departure when he continues, “by a nun.”

“A nun,” she echoes, the words barely reaching her own ears. Her brother is a cardinal, and she has never been under the impression that men of the church are free of the sin of lust, but the idea that someone had enough of his heart to break it is a surprise. She jokes with him lightly, then questions, “Will you spend a lifetime writing to her?”

He doesn’t answer entirely, and she makes herself laugh, makes herself find the situation amusing. She turns away from him, still laughing, blinking as she feels her eyelids prick.

-x-

Rome does not feel the way that it did before she left. She cannot blame the Vatican, for changing, though; it has stayed the same. It is she who has returned to it a new person, unable to disguise herself as the girl she once was.

Most people do not take notice, and for that she is lucky. Cesare, though, has no trouble seeing the change in her. When she broaches the topic of her nearing departure, he wastes no time telling her that he’d rather keep her captive in Rome. “I suspect you would be happier.”

He is not wrong in this case, he rarely ever is. She is relieved he is not ignorant, even as she wishes that he believed her. “Why do you question my happiness?” The question is ridiculous when she knows it is obvious to him; she never could have concealed it from his eyes.

“Because something happened, I know it,” he presses, and she is close to breaking. This secret she has kept hidden from her family weighs heavily on her, and she longs to unburden herself.

They are Borgias, and it is hard to speak plainly with one another. Everything is veiled, even that which should not be.

“And what do you know?” Lucrezia whispers. This game cannot go on forever.

It is ridiculous, in hindsight, to think she would be able to fool Cesare. If she wanted to keep this secret, she should have known that would involve keeping herself from her brother. He knows the difference in her merely by her eyes, and then he claims, “You no longer walk on air.”

She has never walked on air, but never has she felt the ground so solidly beneath her as now. Turning from him, she hears him call after her, “Where is my young sister hiding?”

His pain is too much to bear in addition to the struggles of her marriage. She is a Borgia before she is anything else, her marriage has not changed that, and yet she is a wife now. Her first duty should be to her husband, not her family, however unnatural that may be. She tells him as such, using the Lord Sfoza’s title as her own identity.

“If he does ill by you I shall do ill by him,” Cesare swears.

It is a meaningless promise, for Cesare is in Rome and Lucrezia resides in Pesaro now. He cannot hear her when she cries out in the night, but the temptation to believe him is almost too great. “He would be wise to be kind, then.”

He is silent for a moment, but any hopes she might have of him letting it go are dashed when he inquires as to her husband’s pleasures.

There are only two that she can think of. “Hunting,” she answers. “The marital bed.”

It is as close to the complete truth as she will give him.

With a sigh, he announces, “I dislike him already.”

She is not so fond of him herself, but there is hope to be had in her future. She is nearly free with her husband confined to a bed on the first floor. “But he had an accident, brother. And now he can indulge in neither.” Her smile cannot be suppressed.

“A happy accident?” he asks, suspecting of her what others would never. They are one and the same, and if it is in his nature to achieve his ends by any mean then it is in hers as well.

“Yes, God is good,” Lucrezia announces, folding her hands on her lap in quiet satisfaction.

A grimace passes over Cesare’s lips before he presses, “But he will recover?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” The thought of anything permanent would be unbearable, but so is the thought of her husband’s eventual return to her bed.

Taking a seat beside her, he reveals the depth of his understanding. “You are no longer a child, sis. I won’t forgive him for that.”

It is true. She has not been a child since the first night that Lord Sforza forced himself inside her, and though she is not yet a woman grown neither is she the girl she was when she left Rome. Her heart hurts, to be back and to know that she will need to leave so shortly. She is with Cesare and already she misses him, already she longs to see him again. In a whisper, she requests, “There was a reason for my marriage, brother. Remind me of it.”

He can only turn away, unable to face her.

-x-

She returns to the Sforza estate, leaving Rome behind once more. Leaving Cesare behind once more. He watches her take off, surrounded by servants, and he wonders about the kind of land that she rides off to. He wonders about the man that she rides off to, her husband of whom she spoke so little.

Lucrezia is the light of the family, and yet already that place has diminished it. Perhaps imperceptible to anyone outside of their ranks, but Cesare noticed how she didn’t have the surety about her as before. There was a hesitance in her voice when she spoke, and she did not accept Juan’s offer of a race, saying only that she was much too tired.

When their father married her off, Cesare did not think to expect anything like this distance. Their bond has always been strong, even while he was away at school, but he can almost feel her slipping away.

He goes about his business, doing his work and the supposed work of God, the work that their Holy Father would have him do, and he tries to remind himself of the fact that the Sforza’s are necessary allies. They will need the protection of the papal states soon, and that includes Lucrezia’s husband and his cousin’s army. She is long from the first daughter to have a match for advantage rather than love, so Cesare tries to put it out of his mind.

Keeping thoughts of Lucrezia at bay is only a successful strategy so long as he can think of her as safe. When Gulia rides out to see the Sforza estate herself and to prompt their protection, he finds himself restless, unable to understand why Rodrigo did not send him out instead. Surely they would respond better to a diplomat with authority, but he holds his tongue.

Juan leads out an army, thousands of men seeking to protect Rome, and Cesare feels his world crumbling when he discovers that Lucrezia has been taken hostage by the French.

He plays the part of a man of God well, but he does not find it natural. God, if He exists at all, is unpredictable, and Cesare would much rather accomplish things on his own than hope a higher power would grant him permission. Prayer is a useless thing, nothing but the whispers of hopes without the ambition to make them fruitful.

Even so, he finds himself praying when he hears the news. He prays that Lucrezia will be delivered to Rome safely, that no harm may come to her, that she not witness bloodshed on the journey. She is still a child, not yet a woman, no matter her status as a wife, no matter how changed she was when he last saw her. Cesare will not have his sister in danger, and he vows that he will take up the sword if a dagger is so much as pointed in her direction, regardless of their father’s wishes.

-x-

Juan led an army out of Rome, and Lucrezia leads an army in. This is not the girl who wed a man with hopes of the purest romance, this is a woman who is destined to return home, who will not let herself be convicted of anything except victory. Rome is her city, and she will not see it raped and ravaged in the way that she herself was.

In a few months’ time, she will bring a child into this world, and she will have a family to greet it.

So she flatters King Charles, and it isn’t difficult. He is not a war-monger, he is a man of the faith who has given himself over to false notions curtesy of Cardinal della Rovere. Everyone has always loved her, she draws attention so easily, and so doing the same with King Charles comes naturally. It is natural to survive on her instincts, to ensure that she is able to return home and to her family.

She gets King Charles an audience with her father, and he deftly procures the future of both Rome and their family. They are Borgias, made to survive, and she has never belonged with any kind of people but these. Her husband’s family is made of oath-breakers who did not come to her father’s aid when they were needed most, and Lucrezia is proud to know that her child’s father never went back on his word to her.

-x-

It is a boy, she has a son, and she finds motherhood to be the easiest of pastimes. Her baby is easily soothed, he has no trouble feeding or falling asleep. Most importantly, he is a Borgia.

He is a bastard, but he is a Borgia bastard, the same as Lucrezia and the rest of her siblings.

It has never been a label that Lucrezia has minded. How can she, when she sees the love that exists between her parents despite their lack of a marriage? Even now, with Gulia warming her father’s bed, it is Vannozza that he seeks out for advice, and Lucrezia has never doubted their devotion to each other.

The family is drawn to the rooms that she shares with the baby, helpless but to carry him in their arms and to bounce him when he lets out the softest of cries. He is perfect, innocence unmarred, and no one can resist falling victim to his charms.

“He is such a sweet babe, much like you and Cesare were,” Vannozza comments, holding the baby close to her and breathing in deeply by his head.

“Was I not sweet, Mother?” Juan demands, rolling his eyes as he wanders the room, restless as ever. The only things that softens him nowadays is the new baby and sometimes wine, but the drink can render his mood undependable. Coming back from a battle that never existed has made him bitter, as though he is still fighting against something unknowable.

Cesare scoffs, “You’ve never been anything but a tyrant.” He smiles as he says it, but there is an undercurrent to the words that it doesn’t lift. “I’d wager Mother had forgotten what it was like to have an easy child after you were born, Lucrezia and Gioffre must have been such surprises.”

Laughing, Lucrezia leans into the arm that Cesare has wrapped around her shoulders. She is tired, as her child wakes often in the night. Even if he goes back to sleep without trouble, she finds it harder for herself. It leaves her weary in the waking hours, finding respite when her family insists on watching the baby. “Don’t tease him so,” she tells Cesare, yawning as she closes the sentence out.

His hand strokes her arm in the kind of repetitive motion that never fails to relax her, and the sounds of her family fall into the background after a few minutes. “Go to sleep, sis,” Cesare whispers.

She is so close to falling asleep that she nearly misses the last thing he says. She doesn’t know whether he tells her, “We are with him,” or if he says, “I am with you.”

-x-

The child that Cesare expected to be nothing more than a nuisance brings their family together as it threatens to fall apart. Lucrezia dotes on the boy, holding him close as though the world outside of her arms would devour him.

“I have never loved anyone as I love him,” she confesses, fussing with the blankets in the crib that swaddle her baby. “I did not believe Mother when she said this is how I would feel, and yet… He is the center of my world. I love him more than anything.”

Wrapping his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides, Cesare leans his cheek upon her head. “Do you love him more than me, dear sis?” he teases her, and if he had any doubt as to the answer, the smile she wears so readily at the question tells him enough.

Laughing, she twists in his arms to face him, kissing his cheek in the act. “I have never loved anyone as I love him, just as I will never love anyone as I love you. My love for you outshines the sun, Cesare; do you not already know that?” She is beaming, brighter than anything he has ever seen before, and just to be near her is perfection.

She claims it is her love for him that outshines the sun, and he knows it is true. It is true because Lucrezia herself is more glorious than anything could imagine, and her love of anything outshines a thousand suns. Knowing what she has been through, what she suffered for the guise of an alliance that never came to pass, it is astounding how carefree she can be at times.

The fact that he helped to arrange what would only harm her… She has forgiven him what he will never be able to forgive himself.

Their silence is broken when the baby wakes, squalling as he twists to free himself from the nest of blankets. Lucrezia steps back to the crib, cooing as she reaches for him.

He has never shared her affections with anyone. When he thought of the possibility of Lucrezia bearing a child, he expected it to drive a wedge between them, however small. The idea is ridiculous, entirely unfathomable now that the reality has come to pass. All his love is for her, and it is the same with hers. Nothing will change that.

Watching her with her child cradled to her chest, the sun streaming in behind them, Cesare thinks that there has never been such a beautiful depiction of Madonna and child. It is only natural to go to them, to put his arms around Lucrezia and her son, to place himself in their family and bask in their glow.

-x-

The secret of her child’s father comes out soon enough. She has never been able to keep secrets from Cesare, not when they are one and the same. And it is good to speak of the only kindness she knew in Pesaro, the stable boy who gave her this wonderous child.

Watching the boy, she hears someone enter her rooms. She has sent away most of the maids who would tend to them, relishing the privacy she is privy to in her mother’s villa. It can only be her family, and turning to see Cesare approaching them is no disappointment.

He would hold the babe, asking as though she might deny him. And Lucrezia must, despite the fact that doing so comes unnaturally to her. “You’ll wake him,” she explains, for she has learned to take advantage of every peaceful moment. “That would be cruelty indeed.”

Humming his agreement, Cesare leans over the child for a moment, eyes looking over his every detail. Their mother says that babes grow quickly, and Lucrezia’s is no exception. Every time that Cesare sees the boy, there is something new about him. He consoles himself in her denial, ducking through the curtains to bring himself closer to her. “I must hold you then,” he declares, pressing himself close and brushing his lips against her cheek.

Though he has asked before to no avail, he attempts it once more. “Tell me again, my love. Who was his father?” 

To refuse Cesare two things at once is inconceivable, and she wants to tell him now. Her child is safe in Rome, they are no longer in a nunnery at the risk of not returning. Their safety is not the gamble it once was. “A groom,” she answers, and her Narcissus’s countenance reveals itself in her mind. “Paulo, but I called him Narcissus, so divine was his face.” She smiles down at her child, wondering if he will grow up to look like the man who sired him.

“Should I envy him, then?” her brother asks, sounding more curious than threatened.

Lucrezia huffs out a small laugh, because the idea itself is laughable. Paolo was beautiful and sweet, but that is all she knew of him. Cesare is beautiful, too, with his dark curls and strong features, but she would never reduce his allure to merely his appearance. “You have read your romances, dear brother,” she reminds him, placing her hand on top of where his rests on the crib. “You must know that such a love is impossible.”

Pressing a sigh into her temple, he says, “Impossible loves… I am very much afraid they can become an addiction.” He pulls her more solidly against him to find comfort, close enough to where he can smell the perfume of her hair.

“There is one your heart must find room for, Cesare,” she tells him, looking to their hands. “One you must love before you can love anyone.”

“And that one would be?” he prompts her.

She reaches up, pulling his hand with her and tangling their fingers together. “Yourself,” she whispers, closing her eyes at the feeling of the kiss he places in her hair.

-x-

The war that Juan did not fight in has made him bitter, has given his teasing an edge of cruelty. He is quick to anger, will not wait for reason before coming to a decision. Where brotherly arguments have always existed before him and Cesare, they are now harsher and have malice in them.

He ensures that Cesare is thrown from his horse in the race, he presses his blade to Paulo’s mouth for merely approaching Lucrezia at the fountain, and there are rumors throughout the city of how he uses whores for his pleasures. When he laughs, Lucrezia sees hints of the carefree boy he used to be who would chase her through hallways, but only hints. He is never returned completely.

Their father’s papacy has changed them all, has hardened them by virtue of their experiences. Lucrezia has had a husband and born another man’s child, Cesare plans for Rome’s conquests and ensures their father remains in power, and Juan struggles with the fact that he is no longer the golden child.

Lucrezia would have pitied him before, before she was hardened in much the same way. Even now she does pity him, though she cannot muster enough of it to understand him. None of them are the children they once were; Juan is not the only one who is deserving of pity.

It is he who murdered her dear Narcissus, she knows the truth before she has even laid eyes upon her former lover’s slain body. Cesare sprints after her, calling her back to him as she races through the marketplace. A sham of a suicide, murdered in cold blood, she is sure of it. The so-called suicide note only solidifies her suspicions, and her knees gave out from under her.

Cesare lifts her, carries her back to her rooms, attempting to sooth her all the while. She remembers none of the journey in his arms, only Paolo’s ashen face and how his stiff fingers had been forced to clutch that paper.

“I want to die. I want to die, brother,” she manages, the only words that she can think of. She can have no other fate than that of her Narcissus, the boy who gave her a child and died after meeting him.

He shushes her, pressing his lips to her face, to whatever expanse of skin he can meet. “No, no,” he pleads. “Do not talk like that, please.” However fraught he is at her state, it is no match for her desperation, and she repeats her wish once more. “You have a child to care for,” he reminds her.

If she was sick with heartbreak at Djem’s death, she is distraught at Paulo’s. They were murdered, they both were, she is not innocent enough to deny it. “Then we must both die,” she whispers, for that is the only way. “Like Paolo.”

Giovanni’s cries echo in her rooms, and yet for the first time they do not compel her to go to him. “I’ll see to the baby,” Cesare tells her, brushing her hair back from her face. “You try to sleep.” He kisses her forehead and then her cheeks, holding her close for a moment longer.

When he pulls away, she sees the evidence of her tears upon Cesare’s lips.

-x-

Her Narcissus was a peasant who knew nothing of the games of power, and her brother spilled his blood because he was a commoner, a peasant unworthy of the Borgia name.

Hatred brews in her heart, replacing the emptiness that flooded her upon the discovery of Paolo’s death. Of her brothers, it is always Juan who has taken action first. Cesare plots, he plans and considers every alternative before he strikes. Juan has never learned to plan, he has only ever done as he wished and given thought to the consequences later.

Leaving her candle burning underneath the rope that supports the candelabra, Lucrezia thinks that perhaps she could do to learn from that attitude.

A child no longer, not now that she has a child of her own. Not now that Giovanni’s father is buried in a fresh grave. Rome is no place for children. No one can escape the secrets and lies that permeate the Vatican. She will no longer be a pawn in this game of power their father has thrust them in; she is a player in her own right. And if this is her first move, so be it.

-x-

It is his own fault. He does not regret his action, but he regrets its consequence.

When Rodrigo tells him that Lucrezia will need to marry again, Cesare wonders how he could have been so thoughtless. The death of her former husband will only expedite the search for a future one. By plunging his knife into Giovanni Sforza, he has begun a game of chess in which they are already two moves behind.

He had wanted Sforza dead since he bound to the two together in marriage, since the man’s eyes looked upon Lucrezia’s form without any measure of appreciation. She is a goddess, nothing less, and she deserves to be treated as such. The first time that he harmed her is when his death became ensured.

Cesare waited longer than he wanted to, but perhaps he did not wait long enough.

The knife he murdered Sforza with is a trophy, but it does not belong to him. The man bled, soaking the tablecloth and dripping onto the floor, as red as Cesare’s cardinal robes. Plunging into the man’s bloated flesh, he imagined cutting his chest open and prying the man’s heart out. Time did not allow for it, but Cesare does not believe he would have been able to find a heart even if given the opportunity.

“I promised you a heart, sister,” he begins, walking past where Giovanni sleeps peacefully. Her son is an innocent, and he would not expose him to such treachery yet.

She smiles, leading him further into her rooms. “Whose? Your own?” The words ring with laughter, his promise to her long forgotten.

The knife that he carries is wrapped in cloth, hidden from view. “I promised you the heart of Giovanni Sforza. On a dinner plate.” Her eyes widen, stunned as he moves the cloth to reveal the reason for his visit. “His blood on this knife will have to suffice.”

Lucrezia’s fingers reach out to touch his own, moving to hover over the gift he’s presented her with. Her skin brushes the cloth that has held it but does not touch the metal that brought upon the death of her former husband. “What does it say of us, brother?” she asks finally, voice shaking even as her hand holds steady. “That you promise me this, and I would accept.”

“Do you accept?” He cannot stop himself from asking. He promised her a heart that he was unable to retrieve; this paltry gift is all that he can offer her. What does it say of him, that he is only disappointed in the size of the trophy he lays at her feet?

Taking the knife from him, she holds it tightly in the cloth as she turns away. “I would rather have my innocence back. Be as I was before I married that vile man,” she answers, requesting the only thing he cannot give to her.

He tilts her face towards his, aching with her wish. “Impossible, I’m afraid. For either of us.”

When she learns of the consequences of his action from their Holy father, it is in desperation, willing it not to be true. Shame floods him as he looks away from her, acutely aware of the betrayal he has committed.

“I am to be put back onto the marketplace. Did you know of this, brother?” she spits at him before turning on their Holy father. “And how secure did the last alliance you sold me into prove to be?”

They fight, and Cesare hates himself for supporting his father’s motives even as he understands her desire to remain unmarried. Lucrezia is no longer a child, but he would keep her from these power grabs all the same. To play at them is to understand that happiness, power, and security cannot be found together. His sister is not an innocent, but this remains a truth that should stay hidden from her eyes.

“Am I to have no voice in the matter? I am to lie on my back and wait to be ravaged by a beast of your choosing?” she demands, and she does not need to be looking at him for Cesare to hear the catch in her throat and understand that there will soon be tears in her eyes. Her words nearly shake him to his core, the thought that she would ever endure something of that magnitude again.

He has murdered her first husband because of ill treatment, and he would not hesitate to do so again.

“This language does not become you. Save your thoughts,” their father tells her before turning to his eldest son. “Say nothing,” he snaps, unprompted.

“I haven’t uttered a word,” Cesare protests, but surely his face has betrayed him all this time.

Rodrigo agrees with him, waving his hand. “No, but we can hear you thinking.” He leaves them without saying much more, paying no mind to the cries that he has caused from Giovanni.

Going to her child, Lucrezia hushes the babe, attempting to comfort him. Cesare sit on the bench in front of her bed, tired of the stratagems and plots that surround them. “Like me, you have just declared a war,” he tells her, resting his back against her mattress.

-x-

Upon his return to Rome, Juan brings gifts from Spain. For their Holy father he brings cigars, giving a lavish demonstration. Lucrezia receives a panther, a beast rare and beautiful. Its sharp teeth nip at her when she reaches for it, spilling her blood on the golden cage.

Lucrezia learns to feed the panther raw meat, to keep her fingers just out of its reach. She gives it to a suitor and has it returned, which is just as well. It is a beast of a pet, but she grows fond of it, tossing strips of beef into the cage and watching as it licks its lips in satisfaction. Housed in a beautiful cage, it is a cage nonetheless, and she pities the creature.

Attempts to arrange her second marriage take place while Cesare is in Florence, saving the city from the blasphemous Friar Savonarola. She speaks with her father and mother about the nephews of lords and kings, debating the value in eldest brothers while she longs for her own. Cesare would help them to understand her wishes. He would support her desires, ensure that she was given time enough to make her decision. 

She meets with a suitor in front of her father and meets with the suitor’s brother in secret. Neither would be her true choice, but it seems that she must balance her own needs with those of her father. 

“You are a Borgia,” her mother tells her, passing along the wisdom that women have always kept carefully guarded, “you can have both.”

So she accepts a suitor and he rejects her, something that is almost a relief. It does not mean that she will not marry, but it means that she will not marry for now. For now, that is all she needs.

Cesare has returned, anyway, and she would spend her time with him rather than the silly boys her father keeps putting in front of her. The idea of being shipped away from Rome like a piece of property has never been appealing. She loves the city and all the it offers, but leaving Cesare is an entirely different matter than leaving Rome.

-x-

If the battle against King Charles that never came to pass gave Juan some bitterness, the siege against Forli sours the rest of his demeanor. Pain plagues his every movement, shame floods his mind. “Ten more sons” they whisper behind his back, not bothering to quiet their laughter.

Where he used to be softened by wine and visits with his nephew, he has given the drink up, however temporarily it may be for. Wine is exchanged for the tears of the poppy, clouding his judgement and making him weak even while he feels stronger.

Cesare used to be able to feel pity for his brother, he knows, and yet he can find none within him now. Juan is his brother, the boy who grew up running in his footsteps. His childish manner has not changed despite the fact he has become a man, and he seeks no responsibility for his actions. Cesare is a confessor and has learned to forgive many things, but this is too much.

And instead of sharing in the joy that Giovanni brings to their family, Juan seems hardened by it.

Unmoved by the baptismal ceremony, Juan refuses to look at his nephew. He watches intently how Lucrezia passes her son to Cesare for him to be godfather, how they smile down together at the newest addition to the Borgia family. When Lucrezia raises Giovanni up at the dance, Cesare watches how his brother can stand to look no longer at the sight, whispering cruelties in their mother’s ear.

All of these annoyances are frustrating, but they are just that, merely annoyances. Juan is a changed man, bitter and anguished, an addict who clings to the life he used to have. 

There has always been animosity between them, but it isn’t until Cesare spies Juan lifting Giovanni over the railing that he resolves to do something about it.

Lucrezia grasps for her son, pleading with him, and still Juan does not seem effected by her efforts.

“I would happily kill tonight,” Lucrezia swears to him over Giovanni’s cradle, her young son’s fingers reaching for her hand. She is so changed from the girl she was before they entered the Vatican.

They speak of the consequences, for they are not like Juan who is blind to the results his actions cause. Cesare knows what this will cost. Their father will be devastated. “He loves his errant son, does he not? More than he loves his dutiful one,” he laments, though he does not know whether it matters to him. He is a man now, no longer a boy, and he needs his father’s respect more than his love.

“Well, then, love is blind,” his sister swears.

She speaks the truth, and he aches for her. How narrowly her second marriage has been avoided, when in reality it has merely been postponed until another suitor can be found. “Blind and deaf and dumb,” he agrees with her, and he comes so close to giving everything away.

Lucrezia is always beautiful, but tonight she is ethereal. Her alabaster skin, her flaxen hair twisted out of her face so that nothing can hide her sapphire eyes. They are sharp as they meet his own when she says, sounding almost regretful, “No killing then.”

Juan is their brother. When they were younger, they existed as a trio. Exiling one of them meant that they all left, grouped in three everywhere they went. Whatever betrayal comes next, it is Juan who has betrayed them first.

“Hearts may yet be broken,” Cesare says, hoping that his meaning is understood. “But not yours.”

-x-

Cesare returns to her, when it is done. He can still hear Juan’s gasp of surprise before it was over.

Perhaps to him, they were still children playing games. He had never believed Cesare truly capable of such treachery, and that is where they differ. Cesare has always been willing to do what is necessary, regardless of whether he has a taste for it. Cesare is willing to take the final blow, to twist the knife, because he knows that someone has to do it eventually.

The look of disbelief weighs on him, because he knows that Juan never would done the same. In spite of his bitterness, the malice that ran as an undercurrent to his laughter, he never would have taken his own brother’s life. It is Cesare who plays that part, who was forced to enact some sick form of justice.

He bids the guards outside of Lucrezia’s rooms their leave, for he is unwilling to see anyone else tonight. The only ones he will permit to look upon him after this sin are Lucrezia and Micheletto, and he has sent Micheletto away for the night already.

When the door creaks as he opens it, he hears a startled gasp. “Who goes there?” Lucrezia calls, surely fearing the worst has come to pass.

“It is your brother,” Cesare says, loud enough for her to hear, not so loud that any guards who linger in the hall would be able to make it out. “Your brother in Rome.”

He enters her rooms fully to see her standing above Giovanni’s cradle, one hand clasped to its side. She does not rock it, merely watches him with wide eyes. “Which brother in Rome?” she whispers. 

Swallowing, he stays where he is as he tells her, “You have but only one, my love.”

She chokes on a sob, her hand clutching the rail tighter. The light of the moon from her window illuminates her image to him and reveals how tears gather in Lucrezia’s eyes, shining even as they remain unshed.

Her silent cries freeze him where he stands. He is stained, both his hands and his soul, with the lives he has taken from this world. She is a goddess, the purest creature he knows, and it is his weakness that brings him to bare his soul and his sins to her. This transgression may prove to be too much, despite having committed it for her. For her protection, for her family, for her relief.

Shaking, Lucrezia moves away from the cradle, and yet still she seeks something to support her. Cesare rushes towards her, catching her as she all but falls into his arms. Her hands reach up, skimming the skin of his neck, his face, bringing it towards her so that she may kiss his cheeks.

“Thank you,” she breathes, kissing him on the mouth, then his cheeks once more. “Thank you.” Weeping, still she clings to him, unable to do anything else.

Touching her is the closest he has ever come to religion, and he is relieved that she does not shrink from him, not even after his crime. Their crime. Juan breathed his last because of Cesare’s actions, but it is Lucrezia who supported him in this mission, who thanks him now that the job is done.

-x-

Alfonso D’Aragona is sweet, a boy who wants nothing more than to be loved. He wants her before he even knows that she herself is the same Lucrezia Borgia that he has come to Rome for; he believes that she is a creature of light. An innocent, truly.

The thing that Lucrezia desires most is her innocence. More than safety, more than riches or power or for her father to remain in his Holy office. She would be as she was before she knew anything of poisons or of cruelty. When the worst thing that she could do was sneak across the courtyard to spy on Cesare.

This sweet boy knows nothing of cruelty, she can see it in his eyes. He is young, not yet the man he will become, and because of that he can become almost anything. “A boy of clay to mold into a man of my liking,” she says, and it is almost like having her own innocence restored to her. Better, surely, to marry a boy she can make her own, then to marry a man who would show his true self later.

With him as her husband, maybe they will become what each other deserves. She will no longer be the woman who set a fire under the candelabra support, the woman who did not cry when she learned of neither the death of her former husband nor her brother. She tried to kill Juan twice over, her soul bears those marks. Alfonso does not deserve that woman for a wife, but perhaps she can be changed for him as he will change for her.

-x-

They are lying upon her bed, able to be in private together for the first time after Juan’s body has been recovered when Lucrezia says to her brother, fingers dancing lightly upon the cardinal’s ring he despises, “I would ask you something.”

He doesn’t know how to deny her anything, so he turns his face in her lap to look up at her. “Then ask and it is yours.”

“I would ask you to marry me,” she tells him, and Cesare’s stomach twists at the words.

Despite all of the pain that Lucrezia gone through, she is still wholesome and uncorrupted. She knows nothing of her power over him, the sickening hope that she sparks with the question. She is his little sister, but even keeping that in mind does not weaken his desire.

“As you wish,” he whispers, giving in to fantasy. “My word is my word. We shall run away, change our names perhaps, live out our days in some small fishing village by the coast where no one will ever guess who we once were.”

It is a pleasant image, however impossible. The harsh reality is that it could never come to pass; they have too many enemies to let them disappear to an obscure village and live out the rest of their days in peace, their only concerns those of commoners. The idea is a kind and hopeful dream, but it is still only a dream. And even if it was an attainable dream, it would never bring them happiness.

They are Borgias, bred for power, and they will never be satisfied until it is achieved. And once power is attained, it must be defended, as their Holy father knows all too intimately. They are cut from the same cloth. There is a holy royalty in their blood, and the only thing Cesare desires more than being secure in his control of Italy is his sister in all her devastating beauty. 

Neither of those is truly accessible, but he can fight for one of them. The other he will have to watch wed her child of a betrothed, restraining himself all the while.

Lucrezia laughs lightly, trailing her fingers across his face. “To Alfonso,” she clarifies unnecessarily. 

“Ah,” Cesare notes, forcing himself to smile at his ridiculousness. “Yes, yes, I know.” He swallows, looking away from her bright eyes. “You would have me marry you to him.” He officiated her last wedding, the omen of catastrophe it was, and she would ask him to perform it again.

“Yes,” she answers him. Her smile is confused, unsure, and he hates it. She is Lucrezia Borgia, and she should never be unsure of anything.

“Do you love him?” he asks at last, for her first marriage was devoid of even the expectation once they had ridden for Pesaro. He doesn’t know what she hopes for with her second.

In a motion that reminds him of when she was much younger, Lucrezia dips her head and blushes, pausing before she answers him. “I think he is good,” she states, her hand grasping his. “I believe I could love him.” Once, years ago, he believes that Lucrezia’s dearest wish would have been to marry for love. He should be happy that it appears it has finally come to pass.

The emotion that floods him at her declaration is not happiness, is not even close. Cesare does not have words for it, but he makes himself find the words to respond to her. “So you have a good man at last,” he muses, “but I cannot marry you.” It is, he believes, the first time he has denied her anything.

They are both surprised, then. She sits up on her elbows, blinking in disbelief. “I truly wish it,” she begins, unsure of what else to say. She has never had to plead with him before.

“These hands have seen too much blood and sin to join two such tender creatures,” he tells her. It is the truth, but it is not why he would choose not to marry her. 

She moves behind him, running her fingers down his arms to twine them in his. “These hands bear a cardinal’s ring.”

Closing his eyes, he touches her hand and forgives himself the sin of wanting her while he still has the authority. “Until today they have, but no longer, I think.” He stands and she jerks away from him, shocked. He would apologize, but he fears that turning to face her would prove to be too much of a temptation.

-x-

Before the ball to announce her betrothal begins, Cesare pulls her aside. Everyone is waiting on them to arrive, the last members of the Holy family to descend so that Lucrezia can be presented to Alfonso by the pope. Lucrezia is resplendent in her finery, adorned in jewels that cannot compare to her beauty, and Cesare cannot fight off the selfish impulse to have her alone before she greets their audience.

“Brother,” she says in surprise when he takes her elbow, and yet she follows him without resistance to an alcove along the hallway. They have the illusion of privacy if none of the reality.

“Sis,” he greets her, overcome by a smile when she stands on her toes to kiss his cheek. He forces himself to hold onto the expression as he says, “You are to be married again, so it seems.”

Her own smile falters for a moment before twisting into a grimace, but she does not deny the truth. “I have a duty to this family, to grow alliances and to spread allegiance to our Holy father,” she says, looking away from his eyes. “Perhaps this marriage bed will not prove as cold at the last,” she tells him ruefully.

Poor humor, a reminder of how he has failed her. By allowing their father to send her to Giovanni Sforza, he assisted with the torture she endured by his hands. And when Cesare murdered the bastard, he only ensured that she would need to marry again, to develop alliances to resist the enemies that he has made for them. “If you believe he could do such a thing, you need but to tell me and he shall fall upon my sword,” he swears, overcome by the idea of Lucrezia being injured once more.

Shocked by his sudden outrage, she pulls him further into the alcove and promises that her betrothed has shown no signs of such behavior. “He is but a boy, Cesare, and he has sworn to never hurt me,” she tells him.

Unclenching his hand, Cesare forces himself to listen to her. Even still, he cannot trust a stranger. “You and I both know, my love, how easily lies can be told.”

Their family is surrounded by liars and flatterers, people who would cut their throats the moment their grip over Rome and its kingdoms wavered. How short a time they have been in the Vatican, and yet how changed they are from it. He was a Bishop, turned a Cardinal, and a now a soldier. Lucrezia, once a girl, has been married once and is now a mother to a fatherless son.

Pressing her hand into his own, she gazes up into his eyes and lifts their hands to her lips. “Words mean nothing,” she agrees, “but he is young enough that I may make him into whatever I desire. As I have said, he is but a boy. He is malleable.”

Spineless is the word that Cesare feels is more appropriate, but he acquiesces easily enough. “You must train him well. You deserve to be loved,” he says at last, leaning forward to kiss her forehead. 

She tears her eyes away from his and blinks rapidly before whispering, “I am loved, by you. Am I not?”

“Of course,” he assures her, because he loves her more than she knows. More than she should ever know. “I love you without end; I would protect you at all costs. Nothing can change that.” His devotion knows no bounds when it comes to his sister.

He can hear maids bustling in the hallway, searching for his sister to begin the night’s festivities. With a squeeze of her hand, he leads them back into the hallway. They are descended upon immediately, and Lucrezia turns to him as she is surrounded by her ladies, shouting before she is taken away, “I would have you dance with me tonight!”

His laugh comes unbidden, and he calls back to her, “Your wish is but my command.”

-x-

The pope survives the attempted poisoning, and yet still Lucrezia cannot breathe easily. Cesare sends them away from the Vatican for the night, his lips upon her brow, swearing that he will keep watch over their father. To be parted from them, to leave half of what remains of her family in the Vatican feels like death itself.

She and Vanozza walk back to the villa surrounded by guards, Micheletto leading the way with a lantern in the night. Alfonso is sent away, and she’s thankful for his leaving. This is a time to be with family, and though he is tender and well-meaning, he is not a part of the family yet. In truth, she knows that he never will be. To be a Borgia is to be born a Borgia, not to become one.

There are many who would wish their family harm in this tumultuous time that can lead to the toppling of Borgia rule and the exaltation of a new regime. Lucrezia is unsurprised but no less terrified when Micheletto shows her and her mother to the small closet off her room.

Poor Giovanni does not understand what is happening, but he senses their unease and cries out no matter how she tries to comfort him. So this is how they die, her own child’s squalls giving them away. The thought of having survived Pesaro and the brutality of her first husband only to meet the bitter end trapped in a closet while her brother’s manservant dies in service… It nearly drives Lucrezia to tears.

If this is her death, the last thing that she asked Cesare for was to marry her. She could have taken him up on his ridiculous offer; they’d have found a fishing village and learned to make a life in one way or another. She at least would tell him what he means her, that he is her soul in the same way that she is his. They have never had need of others, even the attempt is a betrayal of themselves. They are ridiculous creatures, to try and deny themselves their only happiness in each other.

Reassuring her daughter of their fate, Vanozza tries to comfort them both as she says, “Micheletto will fight them off. He will find us when it is over. He would not give us away; they would have to kill him first.” She repeats this sentiment, in one way or another, until they can hear footsteps outside of the room and fall silent.

Vanozza holds the blade in a way that makes it obvious how unused to it she is, and Lucrezia clutches her son to her chest and prays that they will at least spare him. He is a child, and he should not be punished for the accident of his birth.

Turning away, she doesn’t see when the door opens, but she hears her mother exhale and looks up to find Cesare standing in the doorway. Relief courses through her veins as Giovanni’s cries only grow in volume, and Lucrezia only attempts to shush him once before passing him off to Micheletto and throwing herself into her brother’s arms.

“Thank God,” he whispers, holding her close. He presses his lips to her temple, not in a kiss, just to touch her in whatever way that he can. Gasping for breath, she clings to him, unable to be apart from him after such an event. It is all she can give to herself for the time being.

It isn’t until long after the event is over that she realizes her only thoughts when faced with death were of Cesare and Giovanni, Alfonso not even an afterthought.

-x-

The idea of leaving her son is unimaginable. Alfonso shows her pity at the idea, but it only inspires rage within her. There is no doubt that if he were to broach the subject with Cesare, Cesare would realize the implications and alter the conditions of her dowry to include Giovanni, but she is nevertheless compelled to do it herself.

Not that she feels he would have more sympathy if she brings it to his attention instead of Alfonso, for Cesare knows her soul and knows that she will not bear any sort of separation from her child. She seeks to bring it to his attention rather than have her betrothed do it because it is obvious that Alfonso is only concerned with the matter because it would be unsatisfactory for her. Better for Giovanni that the two people most concerned with his welfare, his mother and godfather, sort it out together.

Anger boils at the thought of the king in Naples who would pull her from Rome and have her son left behind. She marches through the Vatican, checking the usual places, all the while thinking only of a mother’s right to raise her children. When she finds him, there can be no preamble, and she starts in with no mind to who might be with them. “You are to negotiate my dowry, brother, with his uncle,” she begins when she spies him in the tailor’s rooms.

He glances up at her, surprised but distracted. “The king of Naples, yes,” he agrees.

Not having his full attention only serves to infuriate her. Barging in further, she brings up the matter at hand, demanding, “So must I trade one love for another?”

Looking to her, he can tell the matter won’t be settled quickly, and he bids the tailor his leave as he steps down from the platform. “Do you mean me for him?” he asks, and the words are dangerously close to what lies at the heart of another matter.

“That too,” she says, not bothering to lie. He should have the truth from her lips.

Walking closer to him, she realizes she has interrupted a fitting. Cesare is beautiful, that has never been in question. Beauty may perhaps be the wrong word for his looks, though, a word better when used for pure maidens rather than a soldier whose hands look empty when they don’t hold a blade. 

It is not that Lucrezia has ever been unaware of it, but she has become awakened to it, in a sense, since her return to Rome from Pesaro. No longer a boy, his face has slimmed, losing what little baby fat his cheeks may have once held. A soldier’s garb fits him better than a cleric’s robes, the leather showcasing his physique in a way that leaves little to the imagination as opposed to the layers of fabric he wore as a cardinal. Even still, she is surprised when she sees him wearing the armor that shows him as the warrior he has always been.

Stroking her hand across his breastplate emblazoned with the Borgia bull, she thinks that they are moving towards a precipice and wonders how long it will be before they topple.

“What do you mean?” he asks, confused at her answer, of what other love she might have to trade.

She fiddles with the fit of his armor, adjusting how it sits on his shoulders, finally removing it to find another better suited to him. “I mean my son Giovanni. His presence in Naples might be unwelcome.”

“Ah, I could have seen that coming,” Cesare reveals, because he knows better than she how kings have no compassion for the needs of women and children.

Going to him, she works at undoing the other shoulder, not bothering to hide the anger that leaks into her words as she tells him as Alfonso told her, “The King of Naples feels that one cannot carry into one marriage baggage from the last.”

He holds still for her, asking “Is your son baggage to you?”

The very idea makes Lucrezia jerk as she removes the piece. Meeting his eyes, she sees no resistance to what he undoubtedly knows is her answer. “No. He is the light of my life.”

“Well, then you could insist.” There is only steel in his gaze, the look of her brother who would protect her from anything. It brings her a savage type of joy.

“I will, as must you,” she says, already knowing that her wishes are his also. Turning away to set aside the piece of armor, she acknowledges the true issue. “But you must make the case for the son of a stable boy in the royal household.”

Reaching for her, Cesare pulls her close to him, and she goes so easily. “Listen,” he implores of her, squeezing her hand. “You are Lucrezia Borgia; you are the scandal of Italy. You are also the envy of Italy, and soon to be a princess of Aragon. Whoever gets in the way of your happiness will meet my wrath.” He swears it, and his words bring her a savage kind of happiness.

“We are the unholy family,” he says, lifting her chin. 

With that, he brings his lips to hers in a kind of kiss that holds her captive. He doesn’t ask, because surely he knows that he doesn’t need to, that his desire for her is only equal to that which she bears for him. They linger, even when they are no longer kissing, merely taking in joy from breathing the air from each other’s mouths.

It is the first time he has kissed her, truly kissed her, and Lucrezia finds herself wanting him closer after he has pulled away, telling her, “Let him know that.”

Stomach quivering, she moves behind him. There is no hiding from Cesare, but she makes an attempt all the same. “I fear he knows already,” she whispers, and miraculously her voice does not shake from the act they have committed. It has been long enough in coming.

“He will love you, he will serve you, and if Naples dares to take your son from you, I promise… It will never know peace again,” he vows, and she longs for his lips to meet hers once more.

-x-

Even before Cesare has seen his sister lying naked atop her wedding dress, they are already damned. It may be the first time he has had the vision in waking hours, but that is to say nothing of his dreams. She is more beautiful than he had dared to imagine, and the expanses of unmarred alabaster skin within his sight is perfection itself. The brother who loves her, indeed. As though there could be any other.

“Come closer, brother,” Lucrezia calls to him, bidding him entry. She does not deny their relationship, the innate wrongness that it is.

They were meant to be siblings, to grow up together, if only because Cesare does not believe they could ever be parted from each other. Brother, sister – they should have been twins, together even from the womb. They were meant to be siblings, and yet they were meant to be so much more.

The terms wife and husband mean nothing; they signify contracts, not devotion. He would not have them tied together in any such way, even if it were possible. 

Basking in the sunlight, the gold of her gown reflected in her skin, she is the only thing he has ever wanted, his greatest weakness. He hesitates at the door before closing it, leaving himself still in her room instead of locking himself on the other side as he should. He looks at her, the most beautiful of all creatures, and she does not look away.

“I, I should leave, sis,” he whispers, and yet still he walks in further.

Her eyes do not leave his for a moment. “Why?” she asks, smirking. “Am I ugly brother?”

It is a ridiculous question, and he doesn’t bother to think about it before he answers, “The man who makes that claim will lose his tongue.” Any man who dares to look upon Lucrezia Borgia and see her as anything less than the perfection that she is does not deserve his eyes. Any man who would voice a lie such as that does not deserve his tongue.

She summons him closer, and he comes when she calls. He has never been able to do anything else. She is naked, using only the dress she will marry another in to shield herself from his eyes, and he has never thought her cruel before but this could be seen as such. “Is this a game?” She would be wrong to make it a game, and yet for it to be anything else would be worse.

“It a game of want, and wanting,” she says, and he would take her there in a moment.

Running his hands from her foot to her calf, and he thinks that still they are so far from where his desires would take them. “What is this game, sis?” he asks, for she has to understand what she does to him.

“My betrothed will not bed me. He will not touch me,” Lucrezia finally discloses, unsatisfaction rolling off her in waves. 

He could satisfy her, he thinks, even as his stomach sinks with the realization that this concerns Alfonso, the child his sister would take as her husband. When she mentions the boy’s status as a virgin, he cannot help himself, remarking, “You have the means to change that history, I am sure.”

Arcing one of her brows, she takes that as a challenge. “Are you sure,” she asks, lifting herself towards him and catching a hand in his shirt, “that this body had the necessary charms?”

She pulls him towards her, at first, but he goes of his free will. “I am certain,” he breathes, unsure of what she wants from him. 

Still, she waxes on about the betrothed he would rather see drowned in the Tiber than married to Lucrezia. “I am a Borgia,” she says finally, and his body sings with want for her, “and I feel unloved.”

Every comment is veiled, but Lucrezia is his mirror, and Cesare’s every desire is reflected within her. “Positively foolish,” he agrees. They have wasted so much time without each other.

“You look but don’t touch,” she says, because there is no reason for them to hide from one another any longer. And so he goes to her, watching how she watches him, delighting in the gasp of her every breath. He moves until their mouths are aligned, hovering just next to her, and he moves in just as they are interrupted. 

The game, the forbidden act, makes Lucrezia’s eyes sparkle with mirth. She is an imp, beautiful and tempting, and he would take whatever she would give him.

“You must leave us, brother. For delicacy’s sake,” she reminds him, triumphant and smirking.

He stands at door, watching her as long as he can before he makes himself move. “Yes, of course,” he says, and even then it takes an enormous amount of effort to leave her and close the door, barring her from his sight.

-x-

Lucrezia’s first husband was a man with hard hands who knew nothing but unkindness. It is no wonder that she wants to take a boy as her second, someone she can mold to her liking, someone does not know cruelty.

She wants a boy without a backbone, someone she can dominate easily. Cesare cannot find it in himself to fault her for that. Alfonso is spineless, that has never been in question, but she should have considered the disadvantages that trait brings about. The boy is obedient to a fault, be that to Lucrezia’s wishes or to his uncle’s. Whichever demand is most recent is what he agrees to, regardless if it is opposed to a promise he has already given. 

Cesare would wring his neck if there was enough of a spine there to do it.

There is no resistance within this descendant of Naples, a boy too meek to grant his future wife’s only request. After all that Lucrezia has suffered, Cesare will not see her parted from her child, the only thing that brings her joy without making demands of her. He would prefer to keep her from parting at all, but these are the conditions of power.

-x-

When Lucrezia hears the news that the king of Naples will deny her her son, she is nearly inconsolable. “He refused?” she cries, furry replacing the joy that had been so briefly on her features for seeing her brother and betrothed return.

“When he finally comes to his senses, he will realize that one child’s happiness is a small price to pay for the goodwill of Rome,” Cesare assures her, because this will not be the end of it.

Her mouth forms into a snarl, viscous for the shortest of moments. “Yes, one child’s happiness. And that of his mother. Is that so much to ask that threats must be made, alliances held in jeopardy?” She scoffs, twisting forcefully away from him, and he is ashamed that he could not secure Giovanni’s welfare for her in this trip.

An apology springs to his mouth, but she disrupts his thoughts before it can break free, asking in a choked voice, “Am I so hard to love?”

The very idea that she could think so is despicable. “No. No, my love,” Cesare says, going to her as though pulled by the string of fate. Loving her is the easiest thing he has ever done; he has only ever struggled with how it has deepened. And even then, he is powerless to resist her, to not fall for her charm and beauty. He pulls her to him, relishing in how she accepts his touch without question.

“Rome is the peak of the world, and we are at its pinnacle. And yet, still, no matter which way I turn, I still cannot seem to find that which will make me truly happy,” Lucrezia laments, tears clouding her eyes, her rage palpable even as it is overwhelmed by desperation. “Why can I not be happy?” she demands as he turns her to face him completely.

“I will make you happy,” he says, the words rolling off his unconscious tongue. There is no one else he would make such promises to, but he knows the truth between them. “I promise,” he whispers. It is a vow as much as it as wish.

-x-

Lucrezia is fiddling with the seating chart, wondering about the context of the arrangement. Should they admit that ambition rules the Borgias, much as she told her mother, and let that be the guide to the diagram? Or should love rule instead, letting people mill about and do as they like? It is a wedding, but it is a symbol as well.

Even Cesare’s jiggling of her earring, for he is the only one who would do such a thing, does not distract her. He will go to France soon, and she cannot bear the thought. She points out his placement, emphasizing that she has chosen him to be by her side. “Are you?” she asks, sniffling, even as she knows the answer. His reassurance would make her feel more confident.

“Of course, at your side,” he answers her without hesitance, and her heart soars. “Whatever happens. France, or Spain, Naples, they can crumble to dust for all I care. As long as you,” he says, words finally failing him when it comes to her.

He surges towards her, and she knows it is coming but does not want to resist it, could not find it within herself to resist him even if the desire existed. His hands upon her face, his lips upon hers… It is a sin, yes, but surely it is a holy one. He clutches her with such strength and claims her as though it is his birthright.

Perhaps it is his birthright. Perhaps it is hers as well. The unholy family, truly.

When he forces himself apart from her, he has to move her away from him as well. For she would cling to him longer, would press their lips together once more to place her own claim upon him.

“Forgive me,” he gasps, and she chokes back something that is almost a laugh as tears spring to her eyes.

Ambition rules their family, her own included, and yet she would give everything up to remain in Rome with Cesare, to never be parted from him again. Her lips sting from his touch, the feeling of their stolen kiss refusing to fade even as he departs.

-x-

His weakness is what compels him to return to the seating chart, to the place where his lips last touched hers. Weakness moves him there, but he overcomes it quickly enough. Their family has had enough weakness, and he will not be made a fool by this errant king who thinks his nephew is good enough for Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of the pope in Rome.

Friends and foes, allies and enemies, they all must bow before the power of the papal throne. Cesare moves them like a battle arrangement, a chess game to win. There is only one player whose role he is unsure of, who role on the battlefield is not yet known. Even still, Alfonso is inconsequential, a pawn to be sacrificed before the final move.

And he goes to his sister’s wedding, he watches her joined to this child of a man in front of God and their Holy father, and he sees how she looks towards him, her brother, despite her new husband’s position at her side.

Lucrezia is beautiful when she dances, light on her feet and happiest with everyone’s eyes on her. It is because of her beauty that he denies her when she comes to him to open the dance, surprising them both in a sense. And at the end of the night, he retires to his rooms, willing himself to keep his thoughts away from what happens in his sister’s own chamber.

-x-

The touch to his back startles Cesare awake in the middle of the night, and he rolls to find his sister hovering on the edge of the mattress beside him. “What on God’s earth?” he asks, because surely he cannot have woken from one dream to another. She is wearing only her shift, the gold of her wedding gown having fallen to the floor, hair tumbling loose over her shoulders.

“Am I so hard to love?” Lucrezia whispers, and she isn’t, she never has been. The idea itself is laughable. 

He aches to touch her, to have concrete evidence of the ethereal beauty before him, and yet he clenches his hands in the sheet to keep them from moving. “No, no, Lucrezia, you cannot,” he forces himself, for they will truly be damned.

She does not pause, removing her shift completely and bearing herself totally unto him. “But I must,” she tells him as she reaches for his hands to bring up to her full breasts. “Only a Borgia, it seems, can truly love a Borgia.”

The touch of his hands to her unblemished skin makes him more aware of his sins than the years he spent as a cardinal. Their world contains such wonders as Lucrezia Borgia, magnificent and holy, and somehow he is deemed worthy enough to touch her, to desire her, to love her. There is nothing on earth that comes close to her beauty, and Cesare has traveled enough to be sure of it; everything pales in comparison to her figure and countenance. Years of longing have passed between them, forbidden the one thing he truly desires, and to have it so suddenly presented before him is startling.

She is real, not a dream, but his true flesh and blood. And still, he hesitates, so she takes it as a sign of reluctance and puts it upon herself to convince him, saying, “They already whisper it of us, throughout the whole of Italy. Why deny ourselves the pleasure of that which we’re already accused?” Her blue eyes are piercing as they seek his assurance, his permission.

The softest thing he has ever laid his hands upon, Lucrezia deserves someone as pure as she is. Cesare is drenched in sin, bathed in blood, and he is running out of excuses when she moves to bring her lips to his. “Your husband,” he gasps, unable to say any more.

For a moment, her gaze hardens, and then she announces, “You will be my husband, tonight.” 

He has never dreamed of being her husband, only of having her in the way only a husband should. Marriage means nothing to him, not when the ties of family bind him so. The blood of the bond runs thicker than the water of the womb, and yet he and Lucrezia share both. They are already tied together in so many ways. What is one more? One more sin, when they both desire it so.

She waits for another excuse, but he has none, cannot even will himself to come up with the countless others that exist. Their kiss, when it comes, feels fated, like Christ’s kiss upon Judas’s cheek. It will damn them, surely, but Cesare does not believe there was any other way for this to happen.

They are Borgias, matched in birth and blood, and Cesare cannot imagine loving anyone in the way that he loves Lucrezia, the way he has always loved her. She is the light, the only thing Holy in this forsaken Vatican, and when he is inside her it feels like forgiveness.

-x-

Her marriage, as yet unconsummated, will not be their downfall. Cesare and Rodrigo have worked too hard, done too much, to let this King of Naples try to upset the careful balance they have crafted.

Even still, Cesare would rather bloody his sword than subject Lucrezia to this humiliation that is demanded of her. It is ludicrous, the idea that the pope’s daughter would debase herself publicly to prove something that should not matter. Fuck Naples, fuck Alfonso d’Aragona, these inconsequential players that feel it is their right to make demands of such size.

A public bedding. It is an outrage, regardless of however much precedent there is. 

Lucrezia is blind with rage, filled with the same righteousness that consumes Cesare’s own heart. That such a thing would be demanded of her is an affront to her sensibilities, an insult to both her and their family. She lashes out in anger, something that he cannot fault her for, but her words cut him to his core.

“You would put me on display for every vile, lecherous creature to fondle himself to?” she demands, mouth quivering with the force of her emotion. And when he tries to deny their agency, she rushes forwards, shoving him. “You weak, shameless pitiful excuse! If I were a man, I would have run him through. I would have cut out his tongue before I let him speak about my own sister in this way,” she swears, and he knows it is her truth.

They are not a family made for women. They are Borgias, and Lucrezia was born with the same violence in her that he and Juan carried. If Cesare is being honest, it was only a matter how long the urges would remain dormant before taking root, not whether they would at all. Despite her status, Lucrezia is nearly as powerless as any other woman in Rome, forced to comply with her families wishes.

Startled by the force of her claim, he still attempts to resist her, further enraged by the fact that she doesn’t seem to understand how incensed he is by the demand as well. “It was for the family. We had no choice,” he protests, knowing that this is their duty.

This, more than anything else, only serves to further her fury. She strikes him in anger, the first time she has done so since she was a child. “You had every choice!” she shouts, voice rising, smacking his chest. “Where is your honor? Where is your strength? Where is your love for me?” she demands, finally dissolving into tears.

Cesare has withstood her blows for long enough, and he takes both of her hands in one of his and pushes them aside, forcing his mouth to her own. He is broken open when she manages to say “I love you” through her sobs. 

She yields to him, both of them taking solace in the other’s presence as her cries quiet. Panting against her mouth, he pledges, “I would have killed him where he stood. I would have cut his heart out of his body, but I stayed my hand for the good of the family.” This is what he would have her understand, as difficult as it may be. They are Borgias, and they must pay a price for their sins, for their greed. He would take this burden upon himself if he could, but it must be hers alone to bear.

Shoving him away, she wipes her tears and accepts her fate. “And from our family, who is to bear witness?” she finally asks, concerning herself with the details, distracting herself from the event as a whole.

“Whomever you wish,” he answers her. So long as there are witnesses, their identities are inconsequential. 

Silent for a long moment, Lucrezia finally approaches him again, and yet still she keeps her distance. “Then I want you,” she decides, even as she understands the weight of her choice. Staring into his eyes, she watches her betrayal make itself known to him, and only then does she tear herself away.

-x-

“I don’t feel safe unless you’re nearby,” Lucrezia told him once, and because of that he tells Micheletto to go to Naples and remain with her. It is a wedding gift, of sorts. An apology for how he has done wrong by her.

It is good that he cannot go with her, then, for they should not continue any longer. There are eyes everywhere, even in the Vatican that houses only those who should be loyal to their family. The risk of anyone finding out is too great – they already whisper it, as Lucrezia says, but giving a foundation to the rumors would only serve to hurt them. More than just being afraid of anyone figuring it out, though, he knows he must let her go without him because of the immorality of such an act.

He has accepted his own damnation, but he will not have Lucrezia meet the same fate.

After the atrocity of her public consummation has been committed, after Lucrezia has met his eyes with her husband still inside of her, Cesare speaks to Lucrezia of his trip to France. He is to leave soon, and he would not leave with this unresolved between them.

“What happened before, what all but happened last night… It belongs in the past,” he says, and he feels that he should be whispering such things. They should not be voiced so boldly, and yet he does it anyway. The words are born of a desire for her to go and make an honest attempt at a life in Naples, and yet he wishes to take them all back, to remain as they were in those glorious hours in his bedroom – alone, unobserved, only concerned with each other’s pleasure. 

He forces himself to continue, despite his reservations. “It has no place in your future, nor in mine. All is done now; you can go off and love your husband, and I can go off and find myself a bride. Maybe we can both work our way to happiness.” Even as he says it, he feels the impossibility of it, at least for himself.

Lucrezia is the only woman he has ever loved, the only one he feels that he ever will. There will never be someone who could replace her. 

Finally looking at him, Lucrezia twitches her lips into something that should resemble a smile and instead is merely a grimace. He is afraid of what she might ask of him, for he would be powerless to resist her, and yet all she does is touch his hand lightly and whisper, “Come back soon.”

-x-

Her son is banished to her, and the King of Naples would have her forget him in Rome. He would have her forget everything that was once hers, become silent and complacent. Alfonso doesn’t offer her anything more than pity, refusing to go to his uncle with the matter any further. As though he had voiced anything before, as though it was not Cesare alone who had sought to meet her desires.

And so she must take matters into her own hands. She has attempted murder before, committed it even, although not for the intended target. Juan’s prostitute met her end because of Lucrezia’s intervention, and King Ferdinand meets death because Micheletto knows of her wishes. 

He serves a different Borgia master, and yet the still same tasks require his attention. Cesare would be comforted, she thinks, to know that his manservant’s talents are not going to waste.

Micheletto kills King Ferdinand, her son is returned to her, and Lucrezia will ensure that her family survives.

Cesare weds a French bride in order to assume command of the French army, he tells her when they are both in Rome. Charlotte is the name of his wife, Charlotte D’Albret. Lucrezia cannot help but imagine her beauty, for even though she knows that Cesare’s heart belongs to her alone, this woman was chosen to satisfy his lust for power and flesh alike. She must be beautiful, truly.

Pushing her mind away from her brother’s bride, she tells him of the situation in Naples, and she cannot help but laugh when he asks if she’s married the wrong man. “Of course,” she tells him, the truth slipping out so easily, “is it not my habit?” She cannot stop herself from admitting, “If I married a thousand times it would always be the wrong choice.”

The question is not whether she has married the wrong man, but rather who the right man is. Each answer reveals itself to her so easily. And yet her brother still makes her give voice to these asinine inquiries, and she cannot bring herself to tell him to stop. Not when she is unsure of where they stand.

Siblings, always. Lovers, no longer. Where do secrets go when there is no one left to tell them to?

They press together as they wander through the celebrations, and Lucrezia allows herself this closeness when she has missed him so. She tries to maintain some level of propriety, but it is difficult to remember what that is with him by her side.

“And you, brother, did you marry the wrong woman?” she asks, a lighthearted line of questioning for any family but their own.

“Of course,” he answers readily, and that should not give her the relief that it does, “but she is beautiful and cultivated.” 

These are not the only advantages that his wife offers him, and perhaps some bitterness leaks into her voice when she comments, “And came with an army, I am told.” Even if she was able to keep it out, he would know all the same. Their true feelings reveal themselves so easily. 

He corrects her assumption, that France gave him the army and not his wife, but politics are in their blood. To both of them, the deal is one and the same. “My darling brother,” she tells him, and it is practically a snarl, “in whom politics, stratagem, and affection are always linked.”

Pulling her against him, his breath warms her face when he responds, “Not unlike my sister.”

They stand before a puppet show, watching petty dramas play themselves out onstage while Lucrezia’s mind spins from their physical proximity when she has yearned for him. She does not say the words, mindful of their last conversation, but she cannot help herself for wanting to know more. “Do you love your wife?”

“Love has never been an issue between us.” His answer is practically a shrug, and yet still is serves to reassure her that his wife warms only his bed and not his heart. As if he had not been clear enough, he elaborates, “There is none other like you.”

Love soothes the savage beast, and Lucrezia tilts her chin to display the white column of her throat. They keep their word to each other, at least for now.

-x-

A Borgia cannot live in a cage, and however beautiful the walls of Naples may be, that is what it has become to Lucrezia. She has backed the wrong cousin, and she is trapped, however desperate she might be to escape it. Ambassador, he told her, and she was stupid enough to fall for his trap.

There is nothing left for her in Naples. Her husband is stupider than she is; he tells her to wait and that with time his cousin will give them more freedom, as though that should relieve her of her worries. Lucrezia does not want freedom in incremental amounts that she is supposed to be grateful for, she wants it in its entirety.

She doesn’t merely want freedom. She deserves it, and she will secure it. Her blood is holy, it is royal, and she will have no one question her worthiness. Captivity doesn’t suit her

She knows of herbs and poison, and she doesn’t regret it when she puts her knowledge to use. A witch at last, the entire city under her spell. When she grew up reading romances and fantasy stories, she always assumed that she was the princess and that Cesare was the prince. Perhaps a more fitting interpretation would have been seeing herself as the witch and Cesare as her dragon. Wherever they seem to find themselves, destruction soon follows.

-x-

She rode to Naples knowing that she was leaving her truest happiness in Rome, but she still thought she could come to find a home there. Her husband spoke of the city as though it was the most beautiful place in the world, but it paled in comparison to the wonders of the holy city.

Riding in darkness, hidden in the carriage with her husband and child, all that Lucrezia can think of is what waits for them in her true home. She claimed to Alfonso that her family was united when Giovanni was brought to her, but in truth she has never felt complete without Cesare by her side. 

When they come upon riders on the road to the Naples, Lucrezia does not wait to be sure before she calls out for the horses to stop their breakneck pace. “Cesare!” she cries, relief flooding through her. And it is him, though it would seem impossible for the circumstances to have oriented themselves in this way. The confusion on his face gives way to amazement as he takes in the sight of her, sprinting to help her down the steps.

Without regard for her husband, she abandons the carriage for her brother’s arms. He is her protector, the only one who will ensure her safety, who will ride miles to rescue her from captors. Where her husband was in a position to do something and yet remained silent, Cesare would have slain the entire line of succession until no one was left who would refuse her.

You came for me, she thinks, relishing his touch after being deprived of it for so long.

He kisses her with passion, pulling her in forcefully, and she laughs in pure delight at their reunion. Finally, good fortune is her reward once again, and she clings to him. There is a desperation to how they touch each other, words that go unsaid, claims they intend to fulfill. 

His lips upon her face feel like coming home. 

“At last,” he whispers, his eyes unable to leave her face, unable to look away from her divine beauty. The idea of her safety not being assured terrified him more than he let on, and he will never let her go without a guard now.

When she tries to explain, he shushes her quickly, saying that he already knows. “You were betrayed; I was betrayed. All of us. Never again,” he swears to her, and it means she will never again be captured. More than that, though, it means they will never again be parted from each other.

-x-

The majesty of Rome makes Alfonso uncomfortable, unused to it as he is, but Lucrezia thrives in the game of light and shadows, taking her turn with each. Chiaroscuro suits her, suits the whole family, truly. And as she returns to Rome, so she returns to the person she was when she left it.

She isn’t a little girl who only wants love – she is a woman who wants a kingdom, who wants power of her own. And her husband is only a weak little boy who would not even try to become king, not even for her sake. Not even for the safety of her family. It is impossible, she finds, to not resent him for this failure of character.

His ambitions, or the lack of them, are only one of her sources of discontent. He is timid in so many ways, acting on her guidance as he does not have ideas of his own. The complete opposite of her brother, who asks for neither forgiveness nor permission, only for acceptance. And even then, he does not merely ask, he demands.

On her first night having returned to Rome, she leaves her husband alone. He watches her as she draws her shift around her body, puts on her slippers, and grabs a robe before she takes her leave. Alfonso does not ask where she goes when she leaves their bedroom, and the truth of it is that he knows already. Perhaps should would go so far as to tell him, if he were brave enough to ask. There have always been lies between them, and perhaps it is time they come to an end.

When she closes the door behind her, she leaves both him and any remnants of guilt she might have carried behind.

Her feet know the path to Cesare’s rooms, despite the months she has long been away. There are questions forming in her mind, most of them concerning the conversation she and Cesare had before they each left the Vatican, her to Naples and him to France. 

Any answers she might need come easily once she knocks at his rooms. Cesare swings the door open, and before she can even think of something to say, he gathers her in his arms, pressing his smile into her hair.

“My love,” he greets her, kissing her forehead, tilting her chin up to finally lay his kiss upon her lips.

There is no discussion of the conversation they had where Cesare told her they could not continue. Words have always been unnecessary between them, as they are one and the same. Their reunion is no different, and their desires are still matched, regardless of spouses or children or anyone who would separate them.

To sleep in his bed again, to feel his skin against hers… She has missed the luxury of it, the forbidden pleasures that she longed for while she was away. His mere smile sparks life inside of her that had stilled when she departed from him. Indeed, just as he told her there is none like her for him, there is none like him for her. Serpents, twining together, skin against skin, they writhe.

-x-

He has grown possessive while she has been away. Cesare longs to own everything, to have the whole of Italy united under his rule. That includes Lucrezia, for even though she would give herself to him willingly, he seeks to take control of her all the same. And still she does not resist him, allowing his every touch, denying him nothing.

She was a captive in Naples, and though she now resides in Rome, it does not seem as though her predicament has changed. Frustration does not begin to describe her feelings on the matter. The only man she has ever trusted to keep her safe is now the most dangerous man in her life.

Freedom is what she longs for, and yet she is chained by her position. Wife, daughter, sister, Holy royalty itself. The only chain that does not bother her is motherhood, for she cannot begrudge Giovanni anything. 

As a wife, she finds the obligations of the role nearly unbearable. As a sister, she despises herself when she gives in to Cesare’s desires. It is so easy, however, because they are her desires as well. 

“Why is it that your touch is the only one that suits me?” she asks, and for all it is a genuine question, it only sparks desire within him. He is the only person who can make her feel like the treasure she truly is, the only one who can understand the whole of herself, the contradictions that run in her blood. 

He hesitates, though, and she withdraws from him, frustrated. Walking through her rooms, she laments, “I am tired of my husband; I’m tired of life. The only thing that never tires me is you. Will you tell me why? Why we’re cursed with this feeling that feels so natural and good? Why when we’re together, God seems to sit in the room with us?” She laughs partially, and Cesare aches for her touch, to feel her soft hands that have done unspeakable things. He yearns to feel them stroke across his back, for the closeness they had only moments ago.

“And when you were away, I managed to forget you,” she whispers, and it is a betrayal to the both of them. “One touch of your hand, and God comes rushing back.

It is an intimate thing, to express an idea in words and to have it be understood so completely, with nothing lost in the transformation. “God or the devil?” Cesare responds. He believes in neither, inspite of the position he used to hold in the church, but his sister has her own ideas.

“Whatever it is, it overwhelms.” Lucrezia breathes heavily, shaking as she makes the admission.

Going to her would be so easy, and yet he finds himself incapable of movement. “I have to leave soon.” How he wishes that he could stay, just to remain with her. 

She nods, tears in her eyes, and she does not resist him. “Yes, I know. You have your army at last. You have castles to knock down.” He is no longer a child playing at war, and she cannot deny it any longer. She approaches him, unwilling to be separated from him now by a few feet when soon it will be miles between them. “Will you think of me a little? And will you promise to protect yourself?”

Drawing her closer to him, he rests his lips upon her forehead, whispering, “What could console you, sis?”

With a pause, she looks up at him and then away, no longer able to hold his gaze. “The one thing that could, I think, is another child.” It is as much as she is willing to say, and yet still she cannot say the rest of it, cannot bear the thought of giving voice to a wish that she fears will never come to pass.

Giovanni is the light of her life, and she loves him with her dying breath, but she longs for another babe, fathered by another man. When she dreams, her stomach is swollen with child. She knows it is a boy, with dark hair and eyes, similar to Giovanni’s, but his hair curls, and his skin is pale. A Borgia child, as illegitimate as the rest of them, and yet as close to trueborn as any Borgia will ever be. This one would be raised by his father, not merely his godfather.

When she looks into his eyes, she knows he understands her.

-x-

They have long approached this precipice, and though he would have kept them from it for Lucrezia’s sake, Cesare cannot deny the satisfaction that courses through him with the knowledge that the young prince of Aragon has breathed his last. He would shoulder any and all blame, but it is Lucrezia who commits the final act. By giving her husband the poison that he begged for, she ensures his death takes place at her own hand.

Cesare wishes he could say he would have kept her from this fate, a widow by both of their hands, but it is only right. For all their faults, a lack of unity is not one of them. They know the heart of each other, they are the soil in which each has taken root, and this pitiful boy was merely a distraction.

That Lucrezia ever pretended he could be anything else no longer matters. Even as she weeps, he is unconcerned. There is no grief for her husband in her cries; she is mourning her innocence, mourning the idea that they could ever be anything except for that which they truly are. Perhaps it is not the scene he would have pictured originally, with his sister sobbing next to her husband’s cooling body, but the boy was to meet his end one way or the other. Better to have it done honestly by Cesare’s own sword than through Rufio’s poisons. An honest end, at the least.

He has killed both of her husbands, one for revenge and one for love.

Chest heaving with her cries, Lucrezia leaks tears that mix with the blood that stains her skin and clothes. 

The sight is nearly unbearable. She should not be punished for his crimes, should not be stained with his sins. It is far from the first time he has killed a man, and he is not remorseful of the act, but he would take this pain away from his sister. 

“I will never wash this blood away,” she vows to him.

“Then I must,” he answers her. Having sent the servants away, he fetches a cloth and fresh water. As soon as the cloth touches Lucrezia’s skin, the blood drips away, too fresh from Alfonso’s wounds to have dried yet. With each pass of the cloth, he uncovers her pale white skin, still unblemished, no longer marked from his crime.

Holding still, she lets him touch her, lets him wash away the evidence. Cesare was a bishop for many years, and then he was a cardinal, but he has never performed an act this holy. He is reverent with his motions, careful to keep the now-bloodied portion of the cloth from touching her. “You will be naked, and clean, and bloodless again,” he swears, and when she tilts her chin to expose her throat, he swallows. “And mine,” he finishes, pressing his lips against her.


End file.
